Moscow Starts Survey of Jews Who May Wish to Go to Israel

February 25, 1954

NEW YORK (Feb. 24)

High Soviet authorities have ordered a special survey to establish how many Jews in the USSR are interested in Israel and how many of them are inclined to emigrate to Israel, a report published in today’s Jewish Daily Forward from its Moscow correspondent states. The report says the following method is being applied:

1. A check is being made on the number of letters arriving from Israel in the USSR and the number of letters sent from there to Israel.

2. A check is also being made on the number of Jews attending synagogues on the Sabbath and Jewish holidays in various Soviet cities.

3. The large libraries are being checked to establish how many Jews request books in Yiddish or in Hebrew.

4. Figures are being compiled on Jews who during the last 20 years have been marked by the Soviet political police as Zionists and nationalists.

5. An investigation is being made on the number of Jews still held in slave labor camps and in Soviet jails, and special attention is paid to how many of them were arrested as Zionists or pro-Zionists.

The report says that the Soviet authorities hope that on the basis of this study it will be possible to estimate the approximate number of Jews in the USSR who can be considered candidates for immigration to Israel.